SimCity; Refunds Offered

March 16th, 2013, 17:20

EA = No Buy

— Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

If this is true, then that means the only thing the online-only part is for save games and connecting to other players. The former should have been local to the users anyway, and the latter is irrelevant in the best of cases.

So basically all they did was make a Simcity which is inferior in every way to Simcity 2000, and then make sure it was difficult to even get to play.

And then they blame dropping PC sales on "piracy" afterward.

— It was the night before Hogswatch…

I became insane with long intervals of horrible sanity - Edgar Allan Poe

Originally Posted by Couchpotato
After all the backlash that is justified with this drm scheme. I came across this little article. Its highly relevant to this topic.

It is also very representative of the state of affairs.

All the article can oppose is consumption habits and technological issues

The problems with demanding an internet connection for a single-player game are both severe and obvious. It is absolutely a question of making a game "defective by design"; it takes a game which has always been playable offline and suddenly tells players that no, they may not play it on the train, on the plane, while visiting relatives who don't have wi- fi, during the two weeks it takes to get ADSL installed in your new flat, in your bedroom where the wi-fi connection doesn't reach very well, or at any other time when an internet connection isn't to hand.

Moreover, even if your own internet connection is working, you'll also be unable to play if the servers are experiencing a problem. In the early weeks, they'll probably be massively overloaded (they were for Diablo and they have been for Sim City, and if Blizzard and EA are both utterly incapable of getting this right, I don't hold out a great deal of hope for anyone else), but even later on you may find that the couple of hours you've set aside to play will land in the middle of a server crash or scheduled maintenance. Your experience, as a fully paid-up legitimate consumer of a bloody expensive game, will be notably worse than it was back in the good old days when single- player games didn't feel the urge to run off to the Internet every five seconds like a rude teenager who can't put down his smartphone.

The article misses sensible points: many consumption habits/tastes have been forced by some players over other players during the last decades (so all its stories about consumption habits are moot, waiting two weeks for an internet connection to be restored? come on, playing video games when you are visiting people? come on)

Technological issues are to be resolved. Especially when one thinks that deploying a large infrastructure is costy and that the publisher might have prefered to endure the backlash of the communauty rather than deploying an excessive infrastructure in the first place.

The article misses the one obvious and severe (to quote it) point that states it all about the current state of affairs: when online connection is added to an SP, customers are charged for a feature that is absolutely not called by the game.
As alluding to it before, one clean way to tackle the issue is to turn the gameplay dependent on an internet connection, to make it so that the gameplay takes its full dimension when the game is played online.
In that case, the game comes with features that justify the internet connection.

The article is very representative of players who no longer are interested in gaming and therefore can not see an issue in being charged for a feature that adds nothing to the game, gameplaywise.

It also speaks for the future as companies like EA know well their customer base. As it come down to consumption habits and technological issues, it will just take time for the customer base to adapt.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
The article is very representative of players who no longer are interested in gaming and therefore can not see an issue in being charged for a feature that adds nothing to the game, gameplaywise.

.

Hmmm, did you type that right? Because it seemed to me the whole point of that part of the article was exactly an issue with being charged for being online all the time for no real reason for that type of game.

I might have the lines where the article reads that but the whole point is not about being charged for an uncalled (by the gameplay) feature.

As shown by the quote, the article opposes consumption habits and technological issues.

The fate of those are known:
-while some players are not all the time connected when they play, others are always (or nearly) connected when they play. So this feature is invisible to them as it suits their consumption habits.

-the technological issue will be solved in due time. Just as it was for diablo 3 as I no longer read players complaining they cant log in.
Once again, it is very likely that EA prefered to endure the uproar coming as a consequence of starting on a lower infrastructure than required rather than overinvesting on an infrastructure. As reported, they have experience in launching this type of games. They are either fully unproficient or they knew what was coming, and took the decision, prefering to let the PR department wipe the floor (they are paid for that) and ultimately, save money (more profits) by adjusting their infrastructure up rather than down.

In all cases, while the game online connection wont disturb players who have the adapted consumption habits and that technological issues are going to get ironed out, it will remain that the customers are charged for an uncalled feature. There is no escape to it.

And I did not read that the article made that point. All I found was that it opposes consumption habits and technological issues which are not permanent.

I understand your point, ChienAboyeur, but ultimately do not agree with it. The argument sounds like the rationalization that the product manager for a game like this would employ to justify it. Its a decision that puts the business before the customer. Things may work like this in time and may be the way all entertainment is consumed and sometimes it has to be that way but its not customer friendly.

Anyway, I thought I would mention for anyone else that bought this and has not tried to return it. March 25th is deadline to register to enable you to get the free game from Origin. March 30th is deadline to download the free game (way too short in my opinion). Not a great list for SimCity fans but I chose Deadspace 3 as I've not tried that game and picked up Mass Effect 3 recently in a sale. (Surprised Sims 3 or expansions were not on the list at least for variety and is at least related IP). Now just a waiting game for modders to hack in an offline mode which should hopefully enable mods without fear of having account disabled.

— Mankind must put an end to war or war will put an end to mankind. - John F Kennedy
An eye for an eye, and soon the whole world is blind. - Mahatma Gandhi
The world is my country. To do good is my religion. My mind is my own church. This simple creed is all we need to enjoy peace on earth. - Thomas Paine

Originally Posted by joxer
Don't put too much hope in it, EA banned ppl for less.

Thus the offline part. Though honestly I dont believe there will be a sufficient community around the game that people will bother in the long run. I investigated and EA did enough to prevent modding that it is stopping me for the time being.

I totally agree w/ that article when it comes to people's less than stellar, or even available connection. Ive been stuck for pretty long times without connection, thankfully the games I had t the most only required a disc

When taking a trip and visiting people, a lot of times they still have to work during the day, I can see myself playing then. What about when everyone goes to bed at night, and you cant sleep and would like to game for an hour or two?
What about being stuck in a crappy motel with an awful connection? What if you live in a house that has thick plaster walls like mine, and wireless signals are weak? The last house I lived in had such an awful cable signal (due to crappy wiring, interference, whatever it sucked) and I had to wait weeks until I could get AT&T DSL service. The list goes on and on, everyone's internet access is not universally good

Bottom line is that I the past none of these have been, and should be an issue for someone who purchases a 60.00 game, just to play it singleplayer!

Originally Posted by figment
I understand your point, ChienAboyeur, but ultimately do not agree with it. The argument sounds like the rationalization that the product manager for a game like this would employ to justify it. Its a decision that puts the business before the customer. Things may work like this in time and may be the way all entertainment is consumed and sometimes it has to be that way but its not customer friendly.

I just built on the situation as it looks like to be. At this point, believing that EA(or the associate studio) could not foresee connection issues in the first day (while they had experience on similar launches and/or Diablo 3 example to learn of) is not a self imposing belief. It is a choice.

I prefer to stand on what is obvious: EA personal (or associated studio) is not that unproficient.

As to the off line thing, modding part, it is probably nothing more like a bait to appease people as things return to normal.

Customer friendly: the industry has long played the consumption habits of certain customers against others. This is the way appliances like Steam took off. Those sofwares that added nothing to gaming but suited certain customer habits.

The industry has no reason to treat the current situation differently right now. Steam hurt certain customers'habits as well but it steamrolled. Publishers, for many of them, just decided it was no longer in their interest to make business with people who did not want Steam.

The very fact that players looking for SP experience were charged for a software adding nothing to gaming was also ignored as the crowd of Steam supporters pushed up their customers'habits over other customers.

There is no reason it should not be the same for the requirement of being connected for a SP game. This requirement only hurt those who do not play connected. Probably a tiny lot.

Customers'habits are just customers'habits, nothing more. To each, you can find one customers'habit to oppose. You want to play when visiting people? Some other players prefer to spend time with their hosts over playing games. Want to play on a train? Some other players prefer to watch a DVD or something. Etc…

The only thing that could not be opposed was that anyone was charged for an undue component. But considering the past, it is now too late to bring up that argument.
Some players made that decision for the rest some time ago.

Originally Posted by Temecula
Probably because the only 'people' still playing Diablo III are banks of computers in China botting for gold. I'm glad I made my money back (and then some) off of that turd of a game.

Are there still issues to connect to Sim City? Maybe, at the present time, most issues have been already solved as the studio adjusted their infrastructure up.

Originally Posted by ChienAboyeur
. . .
Customers'habits are just customers'habits, nothing more. To each, you can find one customers'habit to oppose. You want to play when visiting people? Some other players prefer to spend time with their hosts over playing games. Want to play on a train? Some other players prefer to watch a DVD or something. Etc…
. . .

Some solid arguments but I'm still not convinced. It's more like I go huh . . . . and then nod my head.

Bottom line however, even though all prior Sim City games were day one purchases, I will not be buying the new Sim City.